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Storage Ring - Free Electron Laser

Welcome to the Elettra SR-FEL

The continuous efforts to improve the performance of light sources yielded in the recent past to very important achievements, such as the production of powerful coherent radiation down to wavelengths in the UV and soft X-ray ranges. However, it is only during the last decade that the development of technology allowed the transition from the conceptual design to the construction of free electron lasers (FELs) operating in the VUV and X-ray range. This new class of machines is able to generate ultra-short pulses with extremely high brilliance, opening the possibility of exploring physical domains so far inaccessible. Most of the FEL projects under development are based on two alternative single-pass schemes: self-amplification of the electron beam spontaneous emission (SASE) and coherent harmonic generation (CHG) from an input signal provided, e.g., by an external laser.
At Elettra, the setup for FEL operation is the single-pass, CHG scheme, with seeding performed using the radiation coming from a Ti:Sa laser.

Tunable polarization over a wide spectral range is a required feature of light sources employed to investigate the properties of local symmetry in matter. In this Letter, we provide the ﬁrst experimental characterization of the polarization of the harmonic light produced by a free-electron laser and demonstrate a method to obtain free-electron laser harmonics with tunable polarization.
C. Spezzani et. al, DOI: 10.11033/PhysRevLett.107.084801

We present an experimental characterization of the process of coherent harmonic generation in single-pass free electron lasers. The harmonic radiation is obtained by seeding the electron beam stored in the Elettra storage ring with a Ti:sapphire laser.
E. Allaria et al., DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.174801

We demonstrate for the first time that seeded harmonic generation on electron storage rings can produce coherent optical pulses in the vacuum ultraviolet spectral range.
G. De Ninno et al., DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.101.053902

News

FEL at electron energy 1.8 GeV

In the dedicated machine shift of July 2010 we succeded in producing FEL light at 130 nm wavelength using the Elettra e-beam at 1.8 GeV energy. This is a key result for reach the compatibility with normal operations of the machine.

Seed laser 4th harmonic

In order to test our setup for the polarization measurements (read it!) we successfully obtained radiation from the Ti:Sa laser at its fourth harmonic (195 nm wavelength). We are planning to test this wavelength also to seed the electron beam, in order to get FEL light also at shorter wavelengths than the current ones.